Elevator Usage in Indonesia

On of the most interesting places where you can encounter a different
culture is on elevators. It seems that peoples' behavior on elevators varies from
country to country, and Indonesia is no exception. Some people say how elevators
are used is just an extension of how they walk or drive, which provides
some insight on how people in a culture think en masse.

For many
Indonesians who have come straight from villages to the big city of Jakarta,
an elevator is a magical thing. When we first hired our maid to work in
our apartment on the 10th floor, she asked that we go with her down the
elevator the first couple of days. Each time she watched what we did,
we got in and pushed “B” for the basement. When she arrived in the morning
she came up with the satpam (the building guard). After the first
two times, she told us that she figured out how to use it by herself,
when she comes to work she pushes '10' and she pushes 'B' to go home.
The concept of having to go to the 10th floor to work was not described.

Most city dwellers are quite adept elevator users, many are office
workers and quite often you see couriers with their light leather jackets
and parcels to deliver. Everywhere you go in Jakarta it's crowded, and
so are the elevators as well as the lobby outside the elevator. As the
crowd gathers to wait for the next car, they dutifully stand in front
of the elevator, though many times it's not necessarily the next elevator
(that's indicated by a light being lit up) nor would it be their correct
elevator that's going to their floor (i.e., standing at the wrong elevator
bank). People stand in random places in front of the elevator and often
don't make room for people to pass nor get out of the way when someone
obviously is running to get an elevator that's about to leave. One consistent
behavior is people will stand together with their cohorts laughing and
talking, often with their arms inter-linked so effectively it makes an
impenetrable wall (this you see in malls, on the street, etc.). This makes
'catching' an elevator almost impossible unless you are standing right
in front of it.

When an elevator does come, immediately the crowd pushes toward the
elevator, the door opens, and inside another packed crowd pushes to get
off. Instantly, those wanting to get on the elevator push their way into
the car seemly without making way for those who want to get off. It's
quite an interesting scene. Eventually, those who want to get off and
those who want to get on do, most of the time. In some instances people
may get trapped in the back of the car and have to go for another ride;
this is normally due to the 'volunteer doorman'.

The volunteer doorman is inevitably someone who silently volunteers
to man the 'close door' button. He or she rides the elevator with
his order finger poised over the close door button. As soon as the
elevator doors open and if no figure is standing right in front of the
door to get on, the close door button is furiously pushed. This, of course,
leaves those poor souls who wanted to get on, but were unfortunately standing
in front of an other elevator door, little hope of catching the elevator.

Riding an elevator is an interesting experience for those who are
new to Indonesia to watch as experienced by some of my expatriate friends.
Several of us were waiting for an elevator to go down, unfortunately the
elevator in our building is often bingung (confused) and even though
a light on one elevator will go on to indicate it. s the next car, inevitably
another car will come and the lights will switch to that car just as the
doors open. This keeps you guessing which car will be next. The first
time this happened, the light switched to another car, and one of our
party bolted to the elevator. The rest of us looked surprised that this
gentleman could run so fast, as it turns out, he has been here the longest
of all of us (over 5 years) while the rest of us had only been here for
a few weeks. He obviously was well trained in the art of elevator catching
in Indonesia.